Forms and Functions of Citations in EFL Master’s Theses

(2017) utilized Thompson and Tribble’s (2001) framework to investigate the citation forms and functions of EFL thesis writers. Jalilifar and Dabbi (2012) analyzed the citation practices in a specific section of 65 MA thesis from Applied Linguistics in three Iranian universities. A total of 1134 citations were identified in the Introduction sections of 65 Iranian MA theses. Using the same framework for analysis, Nguyen and Pramoolsook (2016) investigated the citations in all sections of 24 TESOL MA theses, then conducted interviews with the thesis writers and supervisors. A total of 2704 citations were identified from all the sections of the master theses.

Similar findings were reported in the citation practices of the two groups of EFL MA thesis writers from the above mentioned studies. In terms of citation forms, the Iranian and Vietnamese theses writers tended to use integral citations prominently. Out of the 1134 citations in the Introduction sections of MA theses from Iran, 699 were integral citations while the non-integral citations covered 435 counts. Meanwhile, among all the sections of theses from Vietnam, the integral citations covered 1708 counts, which is twice as more as the 996 non-integral ones. Particularly, as integral subtype- verb controlling citation in which the name of the researcher appears in the subject position. The researchers from both study explained that the preference for

31

integral citation among these EFL writers is related to the citation conventions and purpose of citations in theses. That is, these writers were required to establish a strong support for their claims within the text by placing the citation within the sentence and emphasizing the researcher rather than the information. Jalilifar and Dabbi (2012) and Nguyen and Pramoolsook (2016) postulated that the preference for integral citations in MA thesis writers is a common practice among EFL thesis writers in Applied Linguistics. Such finding conforms to the trend that is observed earlier in softer disciplines (Hyland, 1999).

Both studies also shared the same findings regarding the functions of citations.

Among the four subtypes (source, identification, reference, origin), the non-integral source was mostly prominent. Such choice of the writers indicates that the EFL M.A.

students tended to report previous research rather than evaluate it (Jalilifar & Dabbi, 2012). In other words, the EFL thesis writers from both study simply summarized and described the cited sources in their study without analyzing or synthesizing them.

Preference for such a particular or two citation functions can be typical in the writings of less proficient and less knowledgeable writers (Petrić, 2007). These EFL writers’

lack of critical evaluation as shown in the two studies was attributed to language proficiency, insufficient training, as well as cultural aspects (Jalilifar & Dabbi, 2012;

Nguyen & Pramoolsook, 2016).

The discourse interviews with MA thesis writers in Nguyen and Pramoolsook’s (2016) reflected the EFL thesis writers’ lack of knowledge about the rhetorical significance of citations in relation to the communicative purpose of each section in thesis. It was found that the thesis writers assumed that citations were only required in the LR sections and not necessary in the other chapters. Such assumption reflected in the data of their study, showing a great variation in the use of citations among chapters.

32

Among all the sections of the theses (I-LR-M-R-D-C), the Literature Review sections contained the highest number of citations which is about 75% of the whole data.

Introduction and Methodology sections followed in the rank with a both garnering around 8.5% of the whole data. Almost half of the thesis writers from the data did not cite any sources in the Results, Discussion, (or Results-Discussion), and Conclusion sections. In addition, several incorrect usage or “self-invented” citations were also identified in the data. Nguyen and Pramoolsook’s (2016) explained that the discussed issues rooted from the inadequate attention paid to the TESOL discourse community in Vietnam.

Bahadorfar and Gholami’s (2017) combined Thompson and Tribble’s (2001) framework with two categories from Petrić’s (2007) framework to analyze the citation forms and functions in 60 MA thesis Discussions sections of soft (Psychology and TEFL) and hard (Agriculture and Chemistry) disciplines from two Iranian state universities. Each discipline was represented by 15 thesis Discussions. Among the four, only the TEFL were written in English and the rest were written in Persian. The Discussion sections from the soft disciplines were found to contain more citations than the hard disciplines. While both of the soft disciplines used integral citations more, the hard disciplines revealed different outcomes. The Agriculture field dominantly used integral citations, on the other hand, only non-integral citations were used in the field of Chemistry. The researchers indicated that for the soft disciplines, the TEFL Discussions had the highest frequency of the function Support, while Comparison was the most frequent in Psychology Discussions. In hard disciplines, on the other hand, Support was identified to be the most frequent function in both Agriculture and Chemistry. Among the four disciplines, the TELF writers were found to use the function Attribution the least. The researcher concluded that the TEFL writers’ frequent

33

exposure to some of the conventions in English texts lead them to use citations in a more strategic way than their other counterparts. Overall, the presented disciplinary practices between the soft and hard disciplines may not be generalized to other “EFL”

MA thesis writers from other countries nor to the thesis written in English by EFL writers of any discipline.

While the above mentioned studies utilized Thompson’s framework, Mastura (2013) used Swales’ (1999) and Petrić’s (2007) frameworks to analyze the forms and functions of citations in all the sections of six MA theses from TESL and Visual Art Education disciplines in Malaysia. Between the two disciplines, the TESL consisted more citations than the other field (499 vs 189). The six MA theses from both disciplines used integral citation more prominently than non-integral citations. Among all the sections, the Literature review was also found to have more frequent citations compared to the other section in the MA theses. Finally, the writers of the MA theses from the two disciplines in the study mostly made use of the Attribution citations.

Mastura stated that the extensive use of such citation function implied that these student writers understood the importance of showing evidence in their writings. Although Mastura’s study served as a useful preliminary study on the disciplinary differences in terms of the use of citation forms and functions in EFL thesis, it only contained a small amount of data.

This part has reviewed the previous studies on citation use in research writing.

Table 4 is provided as a summary of the reviewed past studies.

34

Table 4

Summary of the previous studies on citation use.

Perspectives Genre Past studies Citation features

examined Data Findings

Cross-

The seven disciplines (except Philosophy) used non-integral citations prominently.

Soft disciplines tended to use integral citations more than the hard disciplines.

Adnan (2004)

Education discipline employed only half as many citations as their peers in the Linguistics and Socio-political sciences disciplines. Indonesian RAs used far fewer citations than did the international scholars

in English RAs Hyland’s (1999, 2000) studies.

Citations in results and discussion sections were found in the moves of Commenting

on results. In results sections, most citations refer to statistical norms or guidelines while in discussion sections,

citations were mainly employed for comparison purposes.

35

Table 4 Summary of the previous studies on citation use. (Continuation) Perspectives Genre Past studies Citation features

examined Data Findings

Cross-

Identified a significant increase over time in the use of non-integral citations in academic publications across a number of disciplines, including those outside of the hard sciences such as Applied linguistics, highlighting a stylistic shift in academic texts toward a decreasing presence of cited

authors in the text writers had similar preferences for non-integral citations, summary or paraphrase

from a single source, and generalization from more than one source over direct quotations, which was the same as most of expert writers. However, Taiwanese expert

writers made less use of citations and favored more dated references.

Citations were more frequently used in the English as opposed to the Croatian

sub-corpus, conforming to the general tendency of Anglo-American academic writing towards the use of more citations

as opposed to academic writing styles of other language communities.

36

Table 4 Summary of the previous studies on citation use. (Continuation) Perspectives Genre Past studies Citation features

examined Data Findings

Cross-

Less use of citations in Agricultural Economics theses than in Agricultural

Botany theses. The former theses contained more integral citations while the

latter theses had two thirds of their citations in non-integral forms, suggesting

that disciplinary convention governs writers’ choice in the use of the two

citation forms.

The student writers in the two disciplines used a greater number of integral than

non-integral citations in their theses. The author explained that the use of integral

and non-integral citations is partly influenced by individual styles, these writers’ balance-citation-type reflect their unawareness of the rhetorical functions of

citation types in academic writing.

L1 Master’s

Biology introductions had the greatest density of citations and highest proportion

of non-integral citations, followed by Linguistics. Philosophy had a sparse number of references to previous research and used much more integral citations than

the other form.

37

Table 4 Summary of the previous studies on citation use. (Continuation) Perspectives Genre Past studies Citation features

examined Data Findings

Cross-

Integral citations were more commonly used by writers in soft disciplines, allowing them to make evaluations, whereas non-integral citations were mostly

used by writers in hard disciplines. In terms of rhetorical functions, the most common functions in these MA theses discussion sections were support and

comparison.

M.A. students preferred integral citations while RA writers showed an almost equal employment of integral and

on-integral citations. The M.A. students were familiar with the formal features of citations but not with their functional features whereas RA writers used the

functional features of citations

Writers of the RA and MA theses used more non-integral citations than integral

forms. Both the student and RA writers used citations used for a variety of purposes. However, the former group appeared to have difficulty in establishing

more macro-level or higher order connections with previous disciplinary

discourse.

38

Table 4 Summary of the previous studies on citation use. (Continuation) Perspectives Genre Past studies Citation features

examined Data Findings

Expert vs

Both groups made greater use of non-integral citations. Citation was densely used in the Introduction section followed

by Results and Discussion sections, but was rarely used in the Experimental and none in the Conclusion section. The forms

and functions of citations used varied:

novice writers primarily used citations individually to attribute whereas experts

strategically used citations to provide support and justify their claims through

synthesizing multiple sources.

The L1 and L2 writers had similar patterns of citation use (length and function).

However, the latter group used fewer citations and chose to write on topics that

allowed less writing from sources.

ESL

Both sets of theses used citations predominantly for knowledge display by u

sing citations for attribution purposes. The use of citation for non-attribution functions

were found to be lower in the low-rated theses than in the high-rated theses, both in

the whole theses and in individual chapters, showing a relationship between

citation use and thesis grade.

39

Table 4 Summary of the previous studies on citation use. (Continuation) Perspectives Genre Past studies Citation features

examined Data Findings

Student

Student writers used few citations. Their preference for summarization and generalization was similar to that of more

experienced researchers. Student writers were also found to rely on long quotes when presenting cited information.

Moreover, the students’ texts also revealed an inaccuracies and problems in students’

citation practice

The students with more advanced rhetorical skills could articulate more sophisticated citation functions. Students

learned about citations from a variety of sources, including advisors, model theses,

graduate courses, and their readings, though it appeared that their learning was

largely informal and incidental.

Two written assignments

Petrić and

Harwood (2013) Citation functions

One successful L2 postgraduate Management student

Some of the citation functions described were the same in both assignments, while

others were task specific. Citations were used to define terms and support arguments. The citations in the assignment

with an open task were used to show the relevance of the chosen topic while in the

directed task, citations to apply others’

concepts to own analysis were more frequent.

40

Table 4 Summary of the previous studies on citation use. (Continuation) Perspectives Genre Past studies Citation features

examined Data Findings

Student

In both disciplines, integral citations were found to be more common than non-integral citations. The Literature Review

section contained the highest density of citations. In both disciplines, the function 'attribution' was found to have the highest density. In some of the theses, there were recurring occurrence of incorrect use of

citations.

The integral citations constituted a greater proportion of citations in the MA theses Introduction sections. The preference for integral citation appears to be related to the

functions of citations in theses, in which writers prefer to emphasize the author, particularly in subject position, by using

verb controlling citations.

The integral citations were found to be almost twice more prominent than the

non-integral citations. In the TESOL discourse community in Vietnam, student

writers were not fully aware of the significance of citations as a rhetorical device in their thesis, and in-text citations

received insufficient attention.

41

在文檔中 Master’s Thesis (頁 39-50)